


Six Other Blades

by Mithrigil



Category: Sengoku Basara
Genre: Coming of Age, Gen, Oaths & Vows, Recovery, best butler ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-25
Updated: 2012-09-25
Packaged: 2017-11-15 01:26:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/521621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithrigil/pseuds/Mithrigil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After he loses his right eye, Bontenmaru refuses to be weak. Kojuro can't make him see the way he used to, but he can show him other ways to look.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Six Other Blades

The Young Master has always been a fighter. Kojuro knows: he’s been there since almost the very beginning. He missed only the first two years of Bontenmaru’s life, though he’s heard Lady Yoshihime complain about that enough. Bontenmaru’s nurse, who had assisted at his birth, said they very nearly had to cut him out of his mother, he struggled so to come out only when it was _his_ decision. When Kojuro first met him, Bontenmaru fought to stay by his father’s side because he hated Kojuro on sight, because Kojuro was (to the two-year-old’s somewhat undeveloped logic) neither a parent nor a toy. He fought Kojuro every step of the way to get over that hatred, and after a few years, shifted his fight to wrapping Kojuro around his little finger him the way he has everyone else in Oshu. (Whether he’s succeeded or not, he still fights that fight.) And though he has other battles--with his own strength, and with his younger brother, and his parents--for all this fighting, Kojuro has never seen the Young Master relent.

Not even against this devil of a sickness. The Young Master, barely thirteen years old, has fought it and won.

“Whether you mean to or not, you will cry,” Kojuro says, resting the smallest, cleanest knife he can find beside the Young Master’s sightless eye.

Bontenmaru sneers, tries not to cough. “No way. I can’t see. So I can’t feel. I won’t know when it goes in. I’m not afraid.”

Kojuro shakes his head. “I know. But it’s not something you can control. Even if the eye itself is dead, there’s a nerve that binds it to your brain. I can’t just fish it out like an eggshell. It will hurt, and it’ll make you jump.”

“You said you’d never let anyone hurt me, Kojuro.”

“I know.” And he has to shut his own eyes to admit it, and withdraw the knife. “Last chance, my lord. Do you want me to get the doctor to do it instead?”

“No!” Bontenmaru shakes his head with enough vehemence that it makes him turn his face into the pillow and cough. Kojuro drops the knife entirely to cradle Bontenmaru’s cheek, help him muffle the sound, start breathing steadily again. “No. Not if I’m gonna cry. No one else gets to see that.”

Kojuro can’t help smiling a little at that, and lets Bontenmaru see that he knows what he means. “You trust me that much?”

“Yeah. I’ve got to, don’t I?” Kojuro would never call one of Bontenmaru’s smiles weak, but this one is forced, a little frayed at the edges. “C’mon, Kojuro. Cut it out.”

“I’m still going to tie you down and give you something to bite first.”

“Kojuro I’m _not a baby--_ ”

“I know,” Kojuro says, already working with the rope. “I know that better than anyone, my lord. I want everyone else to think so too.”

He looks, pointedly, at the silhouettes of the guards outside the shoji.

Bontenmaru understands with a single glance, even if he only sees it with one eye. He braces himself on the futon, shuts his other eye, and waits while Kojuro makes quick work of the ropes. Once he’s secure enough to not thrash, Kojuro taps Bontenmaru’s cheek, makes him open his eye so he can see Kojuro’s sash, folded thick enough to fill his mouth. He laughs, and sneers a little, but bares his teeth and bites.

Kojuro’s left hand. Bontenmaru’s right eye. It’s almost easier, in a purely logistical sense.

He pinches the lids apart and works the knife in, slowly, carefully. Bontenmaru tenses and yelps but doesn’t thrash, doesn’t let the gag out of his teeth.

He does cry. But only out of one eye, and only Kojuro can see it.

***

Already, Bontenmaru is wearing his hair loose to cover the scars that mar the right side of his face: already, he’s forced himself to stop fidgeting with the eyepatch. No one dares tease him about it, not even the boldest of the pages, not even his brother, but he hides it anyway, pretends it isn’t there.

The pages and the young lords of the domain have a kendo tournament every three months. Bontenmaru has already missed one for his illness. It makes sense that he’s thrown himself into this next, ready or not.

“It’s far too soon,” Yoshihime says, idling with the fur wrap over her shoulders. “You couldn’t have dissuaded him, Katakura?”

Kojuro can’t meet her eyes from where he stands behind her. “My lady, you know as well as anyone in Oshu that the young lord will never be dissuaded from anything he wants.”

Yoshihime laughs, bitterly and just loud enough that her attendants take it up like a cue. “Still,” she sighs, “he does hate to lose face.”

“He’d lose it more by not showing it at all.”

“So he shows half where he cannot be whole,” Yoshihime says. Her attendants don’t laugh, this time. “Why, Katakura, am I to understand you put him up to this?”

“No, my lady.”

“I did,” Terumune says from his seat at the front, and even Yoshihime has to defer to that.

The first match starts almost in silence. Bontenmaru is smaller and younger than his opponent, but bows quickly, bristling with as much confidence as ever. It’s not Kojuro’s place to say, but maybe his liege is right. Bontenmaru stopped coughing months ago, and the scars have healed, and Kojuro supervises him at drills every morning. If anything, he’s trying too hard.

It shows. Bontenmaru opens with a downward cut, and his opponent parries and staggers back in the dirt. He should attack here, Bontenmaru is leaving himself unguarded, but the boy only blocks, and Bontenmaru gives him every reason, every direction. He wins the first match easily.

Too easily, and Kojuro sees it.

Bontenmaru almost doesn’t bow. A disdainful sneer is written across his jaw, as deep as the strings of the leather eyepatch are across his forehead. He drops his shinai in the dirt and stomps off to the sidelines, toward the welling murmurs in the crowd.

“Your lordship,” Kojuro starts, and doesn’t have to finish; Terumune waves him off, and Kojuro shoulders past the crowd, files away the gossip and speculations until he makes it to Bontenmaru’s side.

“He let me win.” Every other time it’s been _did you see that, Kojuro? Did you did you did you?_ “He _let_ me _win_ , Kojuro.”

All Kojuro can bring himself to say is, “I saw.”

“If you saw it then everyone saw it too!” Bontenmaru kicks the nearest post. His heel takes it on the corner instead of the flat, and he winces. It takes Kojuro a moment to understand why, but once he does it sticks in the base of his skull. “It doesn’t mean anything if they let me win! It means they’re all weak and stupid and if they’re weak and stupid then--”

“My lord,” Kojuro says, so that Bontenmaru doesn’t have to think about how he’d finish that sentence. “Who are you fighting next?”

“I don’t know,” Bontenmaru says.

Kojuro listens out at the tournament, and Bontenmaru follows suit. “It’s Hideki,” Bontenmaru says, after the winner of the match is announced.

“Good,” Kojuro gives Bontenmaru a quick grip on the shoulder, and tells him, “Don’t worry, my lord. You’ll get your fight.”

Hideki is fifteen, the third son of one of Terumune’s newer retainers, technically Kojuro’s cousin by a recent marriage. Right now he’s being congratulated by some of his friends, three of the rowdier pages, while they get ready to hit the field.

“Hey, Hideki,” Kojuro says, “come here.”

“Sure, chief!“ Hideki gives a quick smile to his friends, who wave him off, and Kojuro walks him into the shadows of a nearby equipment stall. “What’s up?”

“Keep your voice down and tell me what Lord Terumune bribed you all with.”

Hideki blushes, but it’s a giveaway if Kojuro ever saw one. “I--“ He gulps. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, chief!”

“No, you do. Fine, don’t tell me how much. I know what he asked you to do. Don’t do it. I’ll pay double if you don’t go easy on Bonten.”

“I couldn’t!”

“I’ll take the rap.”

“But--”

“Hideki, if you go easy on him today, he’ll never let you serve him.” When Hideki makes another move to protest, Kojuro pointedly clears his throat and flexes his left hand at his side. “ _I’ll_ never let you serve him. Got it?”

“Got it chief!” Hideki stammers, bowing quickly enough that it’s almost more of a shudder. “I’ll give it everything I’ve got!”

“Good,” Kojuro says. “Now go warm up.”

Hideki scurries off, and Kojuro returns to his place at Terumune’s side. While he doesn’t take his time, he takes his turns slower than he means to.

It’s not a matter of Bontenmaru’s weakness. It’s a matter of his sight.

“Something troubling you, Kojuro?” Terumune asks.

Not that he can say in front of the lady Yoshihime. So Kojuro says, “Nothing, your lordship,” and lets the lie stand for now.

Bontenmaru’s second match begins sometime later. Hideki isn’t holding up well, not with how Bontenmaru is glowering at him, but at least if Hideki panics and looks at the stand Kojuro and Terumune are standing close enough together that either could be making him nervous. Bontenmaru stamps his heel into the dirt and says, loud enough for everyone to hear, “I’m over here, Hideki. Don’t be a wuss!”

“I’m not a wuss!”

“Then c’mon!”

They charge at each other before the referee calls for them to begin. Kojuro’s breath catches in his throat, but it isn’t quite relief: Hideki’s fighting back, parrying all of Bontenmaru’s strikes, but that’s because Bontenmaru’s swipes are a hands-breadth to the left.

Bontenmaru completely misses an overhand cut, and Hideki’s shinai takes him in the blind side and knocks him over.

Terumune hums, low and loud enough for Kojuro to hear, before the murmurs of the crowd drown it out.

“Honestly,” Yoshihime says. “I told you he wasn’t ready, dear.”

Bontenmaru may have heard that. Then again, his throwing sand up from the pitch, kicking Hideki in the shin, and running off could be explained even without that.

“Your lordship,” Kojuro says, but Terumune is already excusing him, and Kojuro runs off.

Even with time and stride on his side, he doesn’t do more than ascertain where Bontenmaru is going. Not to his rooms--to the kitchens. All right. He’ll give Bontenmaru time to cry alone--ten minutes should do it--and that’s enough for him to come up with a plan.

***

Several minutes later, with an armful of fresh vegetables from his garden on the cliffs, Kojuro secures a quiet corner of the kitchens. Evidently, Bontenmaru has scared the servants off: he’s punched holes in several bags of rice, the kindling under the nearest fire is in ashen disarray, and he’s curled up with his knees to his chest behind a tower of empty buckets.

“Go away, Kojuro,” he says.

“I’m making myself lunch.” He sets the leeks and eggplants down in a bucket of clean water. “Help, if you want to stay here.”

“Don’t wanna.”

“Are you sure?” Kojuro pries one of the large chopping knives from its hook on the wall and offers it toward Bontenmaru’s pile of buckets, hilt-first.

Bontenmaru’s glare could frighten mice back into their holes. But after a moment, he swipes his arm at the knife. He misses it by about a quarter of an inch, notices that, then deliberately slams his elbow into the wall behind him. “Forget it!”

Kojuro doesn’t smile, even if now he knows he’s right. “No. My lord, please. Trust me. Help me make lunch.”

“Why should I?”

“To prove you can.”

Bontenmaru doesn’t have to say _but what if I can’t_. Even if the thought occurs to him--which it does, candid as lightning in his eye--he’ll never admit it aloud. So this time, he takes the knife, swiping toward it like he’s trying to throw it down instead of take it.

Kojuro washes the leeks and eggplants, slides them to Bontenmaru one at a time. Bontenmaru isn’t awkward with the knife itself, but misarranges it over the first leek on the cutting board. He chops correctly, feeding the leek through the arc of the knife, but instead of knowing when to stop, he grips the leek tighter with a whole inch of green left to go and throws it aside.

“There,” he says. “That okay for you? Give me the next one.”

Kojuro doesn’t let go of the second leek when he hands it over. He leaves the washing behind, stands over Bontenmaru’s shoulder. “Look at the blade from the side.”

“Why should I?”

“Just humor me.”

Bontenmaru leans over to the right of the knife, squints. “All right. I’m looking. What am I supposed to see?”

“Don’t worry about that. Tell me what you do see.”

“You’re trying to show me that I can’t tell how far away the knife is. I _know_ I can’t tell how far away the knife is, okay? I can’t see sideways and I can’t see how close things are and the doctors told me everything so _shut up_.”

“They didn’t tell you what it means for you as a warrior. They don’t know that.”

“What am I supposed to see right now, Kojuro?”

Kojuro sighs, nudges Bontenmaru’s face back down to look at the knife from the side, and takes it from him. “Think of it like a painting. How would you know whether the knife is touching the leek?”

“I don’t know, okay?”

“Then think. If you can’t see, think.” Kojuro moves the knife up and down to give him the hint.

Bontenmaru punches Kojuro in the hip. But he does think about it, and says, “Shadows. I can see how long the shadow of the knife is.”

“And how do you know where the shadow is?”

“By knowing where the light’s coming from.”

“Good. From the top, the knife is just a line now. The shadows aren’t.” Kojuro lets Bontenmaru have the knife and the leek back, then tells him, “Cut this one watching the shadows instead of the blade.”

Bontenmaru nods, wipes his hair out of his face, and obeys. It goes easier this time, though he still slows down a little before the blade touches his knuckles. “The shadow didn’t climb up my hand.” He tests that with the knife, lifting it up and down without chopping the last sliver of leek. “That’s because of where the light is, right?”

“Right,” Kojuro says, and hands him an eggplant this time. “You’re going to have to think the same things on the battlefield, the same way an archer takes the wind into account.” Come to think of it, though half-sightedness may be detrimental to him as a swordsman, it might be to his advantage as a shot. But Bontenmaru has to discover that himself if he wants to make that change, and he’ll have to be a swordsman either way if he wants to take charge of the clan someday. “Slice this into long quarters, then chop it.”

This time, Bontenmaru goes about slicing with something approaching his usual focus. It works, and he’s trying, and Kojuro lets him work, now that he has a clearer direction to work in. There are other tricks too--Kojuro knows some of them, and he can write to whoever’s training Chosokabe down south to pick up a couple of others, once Bontenmaru’s taken this step--but it’s Bontenmaru’s battle, and the best Kojuro can do is give him the tools to help him fight.

***

Kojuro grew into his father’s swords only a few years ago. He’s become even taller since, and the smaller of the two is almost too light for him now, so he relies on the larger. At twenty-two, he should be as tall as he’ll ever be, but not as strong.

In that reliance, he has a new pair made.

Both blades are inscribed where the blade meets the crossguard: _Bonten will become the one-eyed dragon soaring the heavens_.

Whether the Young Master continues to use a sword or not, Kojuro will serve him with his own.


End file.
